Meeting Students’ Needs to Make it in Today’s Business World

SAN DIEGO COUNTY – While the needs of the business world are always changing, growing and expanding, the value of a Master of Business Administration has stood the test of time.
An MBA can accelerate career prospects and set job seekers apart from one another. And industries like consumer marketing, corporate finance and commercial banking typically look to those with an MBA for promotions to more senior positions.

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that MBA degrees are the most popular graduate degree in the United States, citing 200,000 individuals graduating with MBA degrees in 2021.

A recent report by Zippia said that MBA graduates in the U.S. show a significant return on their educational investment, with the average annual salary reaching $115,000 and the average MBA graduate earning $4.1 million in their lifetime. According to Gitnux, there is a $45,000 average salary increase for those with an MBA.

MBA programs are a consistent draw for six major San Diego County universities – San Diego State University, University of California San Diego, University of San Diego, Point Loma Nazarene University, California State University San Marcos and National University.
Each of the local institutions’ MBA programs are steeped in deep qualitative and quantitative business knowledge, but all offer something different.

Some are Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics-designated MBA programs that emphasize analytical content and rigor. STEM focus prepares students for in-demand skills like managing data, using analytical models and generating insights to make better business decisions, which is growing in importance as companies increasingly rely on data to inform just about every aspect of business.

The STEM designation may signal to employers in industries like life sciences, biotech and fintech that candidates have the skills needed to thrive at their company.

UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management, for example, is preparing students for a future where AI is an integral part of a business data scientist’s responsibilities. The program equips students with the skills and knowledge to thrive in a rapidly evolving field, Rady’s has a STEM-designated Master of Science in Business Analytics.

The MSBA features an AI-assisted curriculum that incorporates Large Language Models in every facet of the business analytics process, from problem definition to data cleaning, coding, analysis and presentation.

Universities are also pushing out deeper into Generative Artificial Intelligence. At UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management, students can dive into electives like “Digital Disruption,” where they explore how GenAI is transforming industries and to learn to leverage these advancements to rethink entire business models.

USD’s Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering also offers an online Applied AI master’s degree program.

The unique opportunities of varied MBA concentrations and offerings are important in more ways than one, says Eric Roe, dean of college of business, engineering and technology at National University.

“The MBA market is pretty saturated,” Roe said. “You look nationwide and there are hundreds of MBA programs, and I think new programs are starting all the time. From a higher education perspective, you want to make sure you’re creating a competitive program that has relevance to the employers.”

“None of our educational programs provide value to the student unless we’re aligned with what the employer needs are, because you’ve got to be able to hit the ground running with the skills and knowledge that are going to apply immediately in the field.”

In its report on MBA statistics and trends for 2024, NU said MBA remains a pivotal force shaping the landscape of corporate leadership and entrepreneurial success.

Among NU’s findings:

• More than 250,000 students are enrolled in MBA programs around the world;
• MBA grads make up almost 40% of C-suite executives on the 2022 Fortune 1000 list;
• CEOs, CFOs, and CTOs are more likely to hold an MBA degree than any other graduate degree;
• MBA programs with international business concentrations are on the rise;
• The MBA is the most popular online graduate degree;
• More than 90% of MBA grads see a meaningful improvement in their professional networks.

San Diego State University

Doing innovative work since it was established as the College of Business Administration at then-San Diego State College in 1955, but one that sets it apart is its Sports MBA program.
The course has 12 months of accelerated class time that focuses on critical business skills, with an additional four months of supervised consultancies worldwide. Classes are offered in a cohort format, which Sports MBA Director Scott Minto says forges strong relationships among classmates, something graduates can draw from throughout their careers.

The degree focuses on the business of international sports and building broad networks of relationships in the sports world.

Among their studies, MBA students look into statistical analysis, organizational behavior and leadership, financial management, and business strategy, as well as sports economics and marketing, with coursework heavily international in scope.

Minto said interest in sports as a business venture took off in the 1980s and really hit it out of the park in the 1990s with Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane and his “Moneyball” concept.

“That’s when people started looking analytically at front-office operations in a way they hadn’t done prior, and it quickly went from just the baseball side over to the revenue side and the commercial side,” Minto said. “It was a specialized degree in sports business that people had not really thought about before. But the sophistication of the industry and the wealth behind it became such that there was a dire need for extremely talented, smart people to work in all aspects of the industry that was largely absent prior.”

Minto said he cautions people that the Sports MBA program is not for people who are looking into specific sports team operations, but it is for “everything else… the commercial side, marketing, finance and accounting.”

“What prepares you for operations is knowing one specific sport extremely well and being able to scout and evaluate talent,” Minto said. “You don’t need to take a lot of accounting and finance courses to be able to evaluate baseball players. It can help, but I think they’re more looking for data scientists and computer scientists and researchers on that side, not necessarily someone with a Master of Business.”

Minto was one of the first graduates of SDSU’s Sports MBA program, in 2005, taking over the program in 2007. Since then, he has brought into the program a big perk – he takes cohorts of 30 to 40 students every semester on a week-long trip to the Dominican Republic.

Minto said students complete acts of public service while studying the business aspects of baseball academies that have been established by major league teams in the Dominican Republic — some with big pushes for education and personal development beyond teaching young players about baseball.

UC San Diego

Established in 2001, UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management hasn’t been around very long but its been making tremendous strides.

“We are the youngest business school in the region, but we are the highest rated in the region by U.S. News and World Report,” said Lisa Ordóñez, dean of Rady School of Management. “Right now we are No. 78 but we’re on track to jump in the Top 50 within the next three to five years.”

Proving that business is a science, UC San Diego’s Rady’s data-driven MBA program is unique in the marketplace: all of the school’s MBA and Master’s degrees are STEM-designated programs where MBA students focus on building the essential bridges between science, data and innovation.

Ordóñez said the UC San Diego is laser focused on data analytics and generative AI.

“We are really training our students to harness the tools to go out there and help companies make better decisions,” Ordóñez said. “Even our accounting students getting their master’s, they will become leaders, they need to know how to make decisions with data.”

Because of the region’s innovation cluster, Rady’s students work on cutting edge issues that help drive innovation across different industries that include technology, biotech and life sciences companies.

Consumer behavior, finance, forecasting, or innovation, students use a quantitative mindset at Rady’s, where analytical skills students learn will be a boon to tech, biotech, and defense employers looking for employees who are quick learners and can use data to drive business outcomes.

The demand for people technically skilled in business analytics and data science is continuous as companies compete in a digital world. UC San Diego reports that jobs in business analytics and data sciences are expected to grow 25% over the next five years.
Ordóñez said that UC San Diego, which is steeped in life sciences, biotech and biopharma continues to connect with Rady’s, which started with the idea of entrepreneurship and innovation.

She also gave props to the Sullivan Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation a nexus for the regional innovation community and UC San Diego’s emerging startups.

“With the MBA program, students have the option to develop a new venture, a course of business and they are supported along the way with all the training they need to build that business,” she said. “But we also have a center of excellence, our Entrepreneur Center that helps students, helps faculty and staff and pretty soon even researchers outside of UC San Diego to support new venture development.”

Rady’s full-time MBA program is tailored for professionals with three to five years of experience, offering a data driven, hands-on program where students get the chance to test business ideas from every angle; its FlexEvening MBA designed for working professionals with at least three years of experience; and its Executive MBA cohorts are tailored to experienced professionals and leaders with an average of eight years of experience.

The MBA program involves a Rady Action Project, in which teams of students collaborate directly with corporate partners to solve real business problems.

Rady also offers Immersion Trips where students experience international business firsthand through weeklong trips to places which in the past have included Mexico City and Vietnam, where students gain insights and global perspectives.

Cal State San Marcos

The CSUSM MBA program is booming, reaching its highest enrollment in history, with nearly 120 students enrolled for the 2024 semester, and because of that growth, the school’s specialized MBA program now features two cohorts.

CSUSM offers unique initiatives it calls “Meet The Leaders” and “Master’s Experience,” said Mohammad Oskoorouchi, Ph.D., associate dean at CSUSM’s College of Business Administration.

The Meet the Leaders program is the flagship of CSUSM’s Fully Employed MBA (FEMBA) curriculum. The initiative brings high-caliber executives and thought leaders from various industries directly into the classroom.

The leaders share their professional journeys, insights and practical advice with students, creating a bridge between academic theory and real-world application.

“The MBA program is more about real-life experience and networking than anything else,” Oskoorouchi said. “In my opinion, there’s no shortage of MBA degrees online and in person and pretty much everybody teaches the same thing — functional areas of business and some electives. What makes a difference is for students to learn from those who are or who have been in the frontline of business who will share their experience with them.

“Because all we can do is to teach them theory or bring in a couple of professionals to teach some courses from the practical standpoint. To bridge the gap between academia and the real world, we need people who are doing this over their life to comment and share. That’s the gap that’s missing at most schools, and at Cal State San Marcos we try to close that gap both in our undergrad and MBA programs.”

The Master’s Experience is designed to immerse students in a rigorous, hands-on learning environment. The experiential learning component is integrated throughout CSUSM’s MBA program and includes live case studies and real-world projects, consulting opportunities and capstone experiences.

One of CSUSM’s recent highlights was being the starting point for the building of the popular concert venue known as The Sound at Surfside at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

Based on research and recommendations from a CSUSM FEMBA project team, the 22nd District Agricultural Association, the governing entity for the Del Mar Fairgrounds, moved forward on building the $17 million concert venue.

The CSUSM MBA students had concluded that turning the Fairgrounds’ former Surfside Race Place satellite wagering facility into a new, 90,000-square-foot all-ages concert and entertainment venue would be highly profitable.

The students predicted a return on investment in less than five years if at least 90 concerts were held annually. The Sound has been a popular spot since first opening in February 2023.

In its 2023 annual report last September, the 22nd District reported last year that between the San Diego County Fair, the opening of The Sound, business model reforms, and horse racing, it had $80.5 million in gross revenues.

National University

National University has just one MBA program, but the school known for accelerated learning opportunities, has created the program so that it’s possible to be completed in as little as 10 months, depending on which modality students choose, if they take classes continuously and if they don’t need business foundation courses.

The not-for-profit private institution offers its MBA in two different learning modalities – class-based and one-to-one – and students can choose based on their interests and learning styles.

Taking the 1-on-1 pathway, accredited by Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs, allows for more personalized instruction with weekly starts, flexible online learning options and 8-week classes.

NU’s class-based education modality is a more social approach to learning, with the pathway including teamwork, group projects and collaboration; it has monthly start dates, 4-week course options and more structured timelines.

NU’s MBA program has what Roe says is an extremely relevant set of degree specializations, including Entrepreneurship, Financial Management, Global Business Management, Human Resource Management, Leadership, Project Management, Strategic Marketing, Supply Chain Management and General Business.

This fall, NU is launching a Financial Technology specialization, which will be STEM-focused on financial systems, cutting-edge technologies like blockchain and data analytics, and strategic decision making.

“The financial technology specialization (is launching) because obviously if you look at everything that’s happening in any sector like healthcare or business cybersecurity, technology is advancing at an exponential rate,” Roe said. “(Teaching) how you take those technology tools, how you handle big data, how you make strategic decisions using data, is why fintech specialization is coming.”

NU will also launch a Behavioral Economics specialization this fall that blends psychology and business to understand how people make the decisions they do, which is a key for business strategy and marketing.

Roe said NU’s mix of faculty with industry experience and significant research agendas can help students gain a better understanding of the subject matter.

NU reports that about half of its MBA student population is affiliated with the military. The average age of its MBA students is 38, with 5% of students over 50 and about 20% of the students in the program under 30.

University of San Diego

USD’s Knauss School of Business keeps growing and reaping honors.

School officials said enrollment in the Knauss MBA has increased by more than 130% in five years and is at an all-time high, supported by its 120,000-square-foot building – the Knauss Center for Business Education – which opened in 2022.

A year after Knauss announced a revamped MBA curriculum emphasizing social impact and emerging business trends, it received official STEM designation for two of its MBA concentrations: business analytics and finance.

Knauss now has three STEM-designated graduate programs – Full-Time MBA, Master of Science in Business Analytics and Master of Science in Finance.

Earlier this summer, The Princeton Review named USD’s on-campus MBA program to its list of “Best Business Schools for 2024” among 244 institutions.

The education services company also included Knauss in three “Top 10” lists: No. 4 Greatest Resources for Women, No. 7 Most Family-Friendly and No. 8 Best Green MBA.

“Having the Knauss MBA in the top 10 in three categories is an incredible acknowledgment of the work that our faculty and staff do in and outside of the classroom to support our graduate students,” said Associate Dean of Strategy and Curriculum Innovation and Associate Professor of Marketing at USD’s Knauss School of Business Nakeisha Lewis, Ph.D.

“The rankings hold special meaning because they resonate deeply with our mission of advancing business for good and creating an inclusive culture of care for our students.”
The nod for Best Green MBA is Knauss’s fourth time as an honoree, and shows that the school’s MBA program is preparing students to address environmental, sustainability and social responsibility issues in their careers, Lewis said.

“One of the things that we are committed to here is we think about not just our student experience but our faculty being committed to those values as well,” Lewis said. “And so all of our MBA faculty have done a great job of embedding the experience into the course. It’s not just teaching a subject about sustainability, but it’s really reflected in the principles of how we teach and what we’re teaching and what type of classes they’re offered and consulting experiences they have.”

Lewis said USD MBA students have courses that are designed to get practical experience through pro bono consulting projects with organizations that prioritize social responsibility and sustainability.

“They’re able to work alongside, getting real hands-on experience about how they can challenge organizations to be more innovative, and how they’re solving our world’s problems. We even organized an event, Earth Day programming for the MBA students, and a changemaker challenge as well where they had to come up with solutions for environmental problems.”

Point Loma Nazarene University

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon, associate vice president of graduate and post-traditional enrollment at PLNU, said the school has just revamped its Fermanian School of Business MBA program.

Flexible and customizable, with 27 core business units and nine elective units, she said the program can be completed within 12 months.

“We kept our core curriculum but now you choose your concentration,” Brownlee-Turgeon said. “We want to know what you are doing because we want to make sure you get that specialization so it’s not an MBA that’s just a generic, it’s an MBA that’s specific to you.”

The Fermanian MBA program is in four concentrations: Organizational Leadership, Project Management, Global Leadership and the newly created Sports Management.

Some PLNU MBA courses are offered with a high-flex modality, giving flexibility to learn online asynchronously, in person, or virtually via Zoom for each class session.
Jamie M. Hess, dean and professor of marketing at PLNU’s Fermanian School of Business, said the school’s motto is “More than the bottom line.”

“Our professors approach and teach business through the lens of ethical leadership and social responsibility,” Hess said. “We equip our students to not only excel in financial metrics but also to transform society, organizations and people.”

Hess said the PLNU MBA provides incredible value: “A small, private school experience at a price point lower than other San Diego programs,” and includes “a highly accessible group of alumni who continue to support our students and our programs.”